Title

Author

Date of Defense

4-26-2017

Date of Graduation

4-2017

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Gellert Mezei

Second Advisor

Carla Koretsky

Abstract

In this paper, the potential of nanojars as extracting agents of chromate and arsenate from aqueous media into a non-polar organic medium is investigated. Nanojars are a class of compounds that consist of multiple [cis-CuII(μ-OH)(μ-pz)]n cyclic polymerization isomers (n = 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14; pz = pyrazolato anion) that form from self-assembly reactions around a multiply-charged oxoanion core with capping counterions to render an overall neutral complex. This incarcerates the anion, preventing it from escaping the complex without the use of any covalent bonding, making it a potentially highly effective and unique extracting agent. We have concluded that our system is capable of extracting both arsenate and chromate from water to below their respective EPA limits of 10 ppb and 100 ppb, and they do so better than another extracting agent, trioctylammonium nitrate. It has also been demonstrated in past publications by our group that nanojars are indeed capable of incarcerating the multiply-charged oxoanions via mass spectrophotometric and X-ray crystallographic analysis.